The present invention relates to a new and distinct Gala variety of apple trees named ‘Gala Perathoner’. The new variety was discovered as a sport limb mutation on a Gala plant cultivar ‘Mitchgla’ (not patented), in a cultivated field in Ora area, Bolzano province, Italy. The mutated branch was identified some days before picking time and noticed because of the darker red-striped coloration of the fruits compared to the other fruits on the plant (FIG. 1).
The mutation was first asexually propagated in Spring 2003 and 15 trees were initially grown. The new variety ‘Gala Perathoner’ was first asexually reproduced by chip budding on M9 rootstocks of bud wood by one year old lateral branch of the mutated part of the mother ‘Mitchgla’ tree. The first asexually reproduced trees were located in Verona Province in an isolated apple trial field in “Gazzo Veronese” locality, managed by the applicant. The first observed fruiting of the propagated trees occurred in the 2005 season and confirmed the intensity of the fruit stripe red coloration and the stability of the mutation.
In the next years, many other trees have been asexually propagated, planted and evaluated in other locations in Bolzano province and Verona province. All the trees of ‘Gala Perathoner’ have been observed to remain true to type over successive asexually propagated generations and maintain the intensity of their characteristic stripe-red colour (FIG. 4).